Hindmarch banks on bejewelled straps in battle of the handbags
London Fashion Week
SINCE launching those cartoonish leather transfers last year, Anya Hindmarch has sold some £12 million-worth. At around £35 each, that is a lot of stickers. “They’ve become our equivalent of a lipstick,” she says, a reference to the cosmetics lines that are the “gateway purchases” keeping so many global brands afloat.
Her latest idea, adding freshness to her chic stable of ladylike Bathurst bags and duffles, is detachable jewelled straps that transform a workhorse of a bag into something far more evening-worthy. “Hah!” exclaimed one critic, “Fendi did that last season.”
So it did. But Hindmarch has been selling bags with two sets of interchangeable straps for years. Only the bling is new – and some luxurious oversized coats. Fifteen years ago, she introduced a twocompartment, top-handled bag called the Ebury, which several megabrands have since produced multimillion-selling versions of.
According to Mintel, the luxury handbag market in 2014 generated £1.6 billion in the UK alone. Sales have dipped slightly since then, so the stakes are high. Which is why Mulberry’s rocky patch after a change of strategy and the departure of its creative director, Emma Hill, was a big deal, not least for the employees at its two factories in Somerset.
Hill has her own line now, Hill & Friends, which also presented its autumn-winter collection of upbeat bags yesterday (classic with heavy dollops of neon, leopard print and smile-face hardware). The brand’s main problem, Hill says, “is producing enough to fulfil demand”.
Meanwhile Hill’s long-awaited successor at Mulberry, the Spanishborn Johnny Coca, unveiled his first collection at the house. At Celine, he worked on a string of its hit bags. That pedigree was in evidence in his Mulberry designs. The Chester is a top-handled, grown-up bag that boasts five slim-line compartments without seeming over-complex, and there is a multi-zipped updated version of the Kite. The beloved Bayswater, still Mulberry’s bestseller, is there too, but the handles have been tweaked.